I run a SB!Live card. It has a co-ax out on it. Obviously, the default output port is the most commonly used one which is /dev/dsp or hw:0,0. What I would like to do is directly pipe the audio stream to hw:0,2. The reason for the semi-permenant pipe is because some applications, Ryhthmbox for example, do not seeingly support changing the output.

Google has provided some info as has Alsa's site. Bith suggest using an .asoundrc file and a plug entry. However, this does not work. I cannot get it to pipe directly. Typing "aplay -D plug:0,2 nix.wav" plays the file to hw:0,2 and I can hear it. It doesn't solve the problem though.

Can anyone please give me any tips, hints or pointer to help my cause. I bet the answer is really simple, just I cannot get it!

You should be able to do this using aoss from the alsa OSS compatablity library. This lets you divert sounds going to /dev/dsp to alsa plugs.
Create an .asound plug called pcm.dsp0 like this
pcm.dsp0 {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,2"
}

Then run the program you want to pipe using aoss eg:
aoss Rythmbox
Check out man aoss for more info
Hope this helps

I'm not too clued up on alsa but you could try routing sound through a deamon. I'm a KDE man so I don't know how you would do this in gnome, but under KDE I set arts to run on hw:0,1 and run stuff with 'artsdsp *program*' this ensures hw:0,0 is free for Firefox/games etc.

I'm not sure what gnome uses these days, it used to use esound didn't it?

Sounds like the card 0 statement in the pcm and ctl sections is causing a problem. I need this because I've also got the on-board motherboard sound device assigned to card 1. You could try removing the offending card 0 lines, or the pcm and ctl sections entirely.

Are there any errors produced? If the sound still isn't being generated, then there's a good chance it could be one of the settings in the ALSA mixer. The best way to check is using alsamixergui; make sure that the IEC985 options are checked.

Sometimes you also need to move the IEC985 volume slider onto the first notch, and I've often had to resort to random slider adjustment (rta) to get any sound at all.

I don't know if any of you emu10k1 users found out how to record only a certain channel (line-in in my case) while playing something on pcm (other audio tracks in the sequencer). I'm running with alsa 1.0.8 and the mixer doesn't allow me to select a capture source other than analog mix, which results in recording from line-in and pcm!

Anyone with a working multi-track emu10k1 linux setup out there?? What versions of Alsa, Jack, actually work ?